Studi e ricerche

Postcolonial Publics: Art and Citizen Media in Europe

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open access | peer reviewed

Abstract

Postcolonial Publics: Art and Citizen Media in Europe presents a collection of sixteen chapters that explore the themes of how migrants, refugees and citizens express and share their political and social causes and experiences through art and media. These expressions, which we term ‘citizen media’, arguably become a platform for postcolonial intellectuals as the studies pursued in this volume investigate the different ways in which previously excluded social groups regain public voice. The volume strives to understand the different articulations of migrants’, refugees’, and citizens’ struggle against increasingly harsh European politics that allow them to achieve and empower political subjectivity in a mediated and creative space. In this way, the contributions in this volume present case studies of citizen media in the form of ‘activistic art’ or ‘artivism’ (Trandafoiu, Ruffini, Cazzato & Taronna, Koobak & Tali, Negrón-Muntaner), activism through different kinds of technological media (Chouliaraki and Al-Ghazzi, Jedlowski), such as documentaries and film (Denić), podcasts, music and soundscapes (Romeo and Fabbri, Western, Lazzari, Huggan), and activisms through writings from journalism to fiction (Longhi, Concilio, Festa, De Capitani). The volume argues that citizen media go hand in hand with postcolonial critique because of their shared focus on the deconstruction and decolonisation of Western logics and narratives. Moreover, both question the concept of citizen and of citizenship as they relate to the nation-state and explores the power of media as a tool for participation as well as an instrument of political strength. The book forwards postcolonial artivism and citizen media as a critical framework to understand the refugee and migrant situations in contemporary Europe.

Keywords Intersectionality • Syria war • Structural racism • Borders • Citizenship • Politics • Knowledge • Justice • Anticolonialism • Postcolonial France • Visibility • Migrant Voices • Bowie • Crisis ordinariness • Artivist engagement • Counter-publics • Black intellectuals • New media • Literature of migration • Border culture • Radio • Black portraitures • Black comedians • Conflict news • Social media • Flesh witnessing • Multimodal narration • Relation • Rhythm • User-generated content • Blackness • Black Italian women intellectuals • Colonialism • Hostile environment • Decoloniality • Renaming • Refugee Tales • Postsocialism • Theatre and refugees • Discrimination • Visual art • Humour • Postcolonial theory • Reni Eddo-Lodge • Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie • Decoloniality of knowledge • Social engagement • Research • Diaspora • Mainstream media • Podcasts • Coloniality • Intellectual • Failure • Slavery • Memory • Cinema • African-European • Documentary auto-ethnography • Italy • Estonian art • Racism • Postcolonial • Eastern Europe • Palestine • Performance and spatial politics • Activist curating • Activism • Citizen media • Decolonial citizenship • Digital activism • Teju Cole • Borderscape • Participatory art and public spaces • Post-socialism • Warsan Shire • Postcolonial Europe • Celebrity • Romania • Relay

Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-677-0 | e-ISBN 978-88-6969-677-0 | ISBN (PRINT) 978-88-6969-678-7 | Published Jan. 26, 2023 | Language en

Copyright © 2023 Bolette B. Blaagaard, Sabrina Marchetti, Sandra Ponzanesi, Shaul Bassi. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.